I'm 26 now and the height of nu metal popularity was when I was an angsty teen. Slipknot were by far my favourite at the time with Disturbed probably in second.

I came at the right time to nu-metal was a quick stepping stone from classic rock into finding all sorts of metal via file sharing. It immersed me in most of the metal standards of the time before I was able to afford to hear them, and compilations were gateways into more stuff. Funny to look back over a decade later and see how much stuff I didn't get into at the time that I love now.

Basically, yeah. KSE always had like one good song per album - "When Darkness Falls" was fucking great for example, but a lot of the rest of that album was just irritating.

The Living Infinite sounds great so far. Exactly what I wanted. The vocals are a huge improvement too, much less of the screechy ear-rape from the earlier stuff I sampled, more balanced sort of sound.

I never really got into nu metal much at all. Spent my time getting into Maiden around those days.

Listening to yet more Bolt Thrower recently has led me to four clarities:

1. THE POST-APOCALYPTIC. The atmosphere of post-apocalypse is something very specific and incredibly key to Bolt Thrower's sound, their aura, their concept. It's part of what made them not just a great band, but a classic, unforgettable band. After The IVth Crusade they lost that. And that =

2. From The IVth Crusade going back, Bolt Thrower's music was actually fucking DEATH METAL. As opposed to...something else. Something suckier.

3. The IVth Crusade absolutely demolishes everything that came after it.

4. Bolt Thrower is the only band that I listen to and enjoy just as much now as when I was 13.

You seem to be very clouded on your clarities.

Under_Peter_Stormare, you're nuts. ...For Victory and Those Once Loyal are just as good as the mighty IVth Crusade.

Exactly. It's pretty clear that he is thinking very poorly.

I kinda lost interest after the initial tracks. I think the double album was 'too much' to assimilate at one go. I got that from some friends of mine as well. I might revisit it at a later point of time.

I never really checked out Dream Theater earlier and I'm listening to 'Hollow Years' now. Someone had linked me recently. I like this song. Cheesy sing-along chorus, soft melodious ballad like song.

Bolt Thrower has such a good reputation...

I've only listened to Mercenary, which I really liked. I'm aware that one's considered to be one of their weakest efforts...I really don't know why I haven't bought more stuff from them.

This.

1. They only really had a post-apocylptic feel on two albums (Realms of Chaos and War Master). The debut has more of a during the apocalypse vibe.

2. They changed. As they always have. Although the production on Mercenary was a huge misstep, the album still has some great songs. They did become less aggressive/raw, but bands change. I wouldn't want them to keep rehashing the same ideas.

3. For Victory... is great, and is generally regarded as so. Those Once Loyal is great too.

4.

The first disc was better, and yeah, it's a bit much overall. I'll have to try listening to the second disc by itself sometime just to see how it holds up alone. This definitely is the work of a mature band...heavy, complex and interesting. They lose some of their weight under the 84 minute runtime but it seems like they do a remarkable job at holding up anyway, considering most bands who try stuff like this end up falling flat.

Bolt Thrower...c'mon, Those Once Loyal is fucking immaculate. Admittedly it's the one I'm most familiar with from them though, haven't heard enough of their albums otherwise. I like TOL better than Realms of Chaos though.

Well produced? Yes. Smoothly composed? Yes. Atmospheric? Eh...no.

But that doesn't even really mean anything!

Explain!

You're an enemy of metal if you don't like Those Once Loyal and I should do to you what I did with the poser in my short story! (first post of the FFA) Change your clothes before though, I don't want to ruin them

It's been a month since I'm 23... Nothing good has happened... And nothing will judging by the looks and tests of this semester. Stupid motherfucking Relativity.

Hey, I'm the one with the hellhound! Watch it, Jon Snow...

I get bitter about Bolt Thrower not simply because they changed, but because I feel they began to betray their theme. The early albums were steeped in a visceral sense of anguish, horror, tragedy, desolation... all completely befitting their artistic concept. Once they started going in that polished, bouncy groove direction they just completely lost all emotional and psychological efficacy. They lost the darkness, the despair, the mocking hope. They became a band seemingly more interested in writing cool-sounding riffs than actually evoking anything. I won't say ...For Victory and Those Once Loyal are objectively bad albums, because they're not... they just feel hollow in comparison to the earlier material.

Eagerly awaiting the day when someone does a BT/MR hybrid. I expect MA to implode under a cloud of its' own sperm.

I can see where you're coming from. For Victory... was the beginning of a big change for them. I do agree that they lost some of that visceral energy and focused less on atmosphere. Honestly, I don't mind that they changed. It's different, but I like it for different reasons. They're very good at both styles. I do maintain that the production on Mercenary is a fucking joke. Otherwise a good album and I'd still give it at least an 80, but making it that polished was a really stupid idea.




While I love both bands (although there is some MR that doesn't blow me away), the amount of fanboyism on the forums does go way over the top, and I do fully admit to sometimes participating in it. I suppose all of this is because both bands are accessible while not being watered down or trendy. There are certainly other bands deserving of the same praise, but I guess they don't have the same universal appeal.

I've never been into Bolt Thrower. They're another one of those bands I have not willed up enough of a fuck to listen to.

Subrick, I hope you read the rules. Having to write a long ass post to delete it afterwards was funny. Also, accusing me of "not clicking the links" haha.

Realm of Chaos was good and Mercenary had a few good songs, but all and all they're an inferior band to most American death metal bands and are only worth a cursory glance for Realm of Chaos which is very heavy if you get tired of listening to superior bands. You aren't missing anything though in spite of what the MA horde tells you.

They are overrated, but Veracs is a moron. They're a great, consistent band, and are well worth your time.

Consistent as in maybe two or so non-throwaway tracks per album, with the rest being background music. I guess that's a good way of putting it.

The IVth Crusade is my favourite BT album as well followed by Realm of Chaos but ...For Victory and Those Once Loyal are pretty excellent and NOT bad by any means. You should give those two a few spins again and see if it helps to change your opinion.

bah! no excuses, haha

I'm only 2 years younger, and I was already getting sick of that stuff by 2000-2001. I hadn't even heard of Linkin Park until at least 2000, and I never liked them when I did... I think they were part of a sort of "more streamlined" 3rd or 4th wave of NuMetal that came out after I had already lost interest in it or something. I was all about Rhapsody by then (I know, not much better )...

I still consider myself a fan of Mindless Self Indulgence, tbh. I first heard them in '99, and they were the weirdest thing I'd ever heard up to that point though, so they made a good impression on me, I guess. I actually haven't heard anything since the album with the blue cross on it (can't even remember the name of it), plus I fucking hate their entire fanbase from around that period on, but I still appreciate the music I am familiar with. I actually went to see them maybe just 5-6 years ago. Every other band sucked, BTW. And their fans were all teenage white trash and mallgoths and white trash mallgoths.

I think MSI and maybe Mushroomhead and Slipknot were the last numetal bands I was "into" after 2003. I learned quickly, though.

I actually still have a soft spot for a couple of songs from Adrenaline by Deftones... I stopped paying attention to most Numetal before White Pony even came out, though, so I never actually heard that album... I also get a little nostalgic about the first 4 Korn records, but hearing them now, I mostly feel embarrassed.

PS: Hey, I just found out a 7" comp. I submitted to forever ago will be out in April... My first vinyl release... Neat! It's only 15 seconds of material, but I'm still grateful for the opportunity to be featured and have my vinyl cherry popped... Now I need to find someone who does wax cylinders...

Birthdays after 21 are entirely meaningless, so expect that for the rest of your life, champ!

That's why I deleted it, because I remembered that rule right after posting it. I don't submit bands often so the rules pertaining to them I really don't keep in my head.

Yeah... I remember by nu metal phase...

Linkin Park was actually the first "heavier band" I got into as a teenager. Before that, I was listening to All American rejects, Maroon 5, Matchbox 20, and Switchfoot. Now that I'm in my 20's I have to ask myself what the fuck I was thinking from time to time

But as for nu metal as a whole, Linkin Park, Disturbed, Machine Head's two nu metal albums which will go unnamed, Dry Kill Logic (one of the less popular bands in the early 2000's), and Slipknot (who I thought were truly satanists) ruled my ipod in jr high and early high school.

Never really enjoyed the more popular acts like Korn or SoaD because of the vocals though. That one Korn song with the beatboxing thing use to annoy the fuck out of me and SoaD's vocals made me cringe because they were so bad.

Am I the only one who thinks Bolt Thrower lost their magic after ...For Victory? Also, how is it that Veracs is so reliably wrong about pretty much everything? Broken clock and such.

I was too far gone into the wastes of the underground to bother with this.. "nu metal" malarkey. Never even crossed my radar thankfully, and still to this day don't understand the shite.

You should all know by now about Veracs and his distaste for what a majority of us like - his tastes, he believes are superior, and has much better opinions than us all (I'm sure he thinks that). However he is usually wrong (opinions, opinions...), so it is of no value to take umbrage at them. Each to their own...

I love Bolt Thrower though, BUT I am a sucker for IVth Crusade and Warmaster above all and any they have done after, be it good to great. These albums stand strong.

I'm only familiar with Those Once Loyal which has some killer guitarwork. The leads on ''When Cannons Fade'' are fucking great. I should hear more of this band.

It was a girl in 9th grade who introduced me to some 'nu metal' bands. Back then I wasn't into metal at all. I mostly listened to Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Dire Straits, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Robin Trower, Clapton and all of his projects e.g Cream, Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominos etc. When I lend my ears to Meteora I was like why the fuck are they rapping! I couldn't stand hip hop or any kind of rapping even back then. So kicked Linkin Fart off right away, same thing with Korn. But I found Mudvayne's first two albums pretty interesting. Mudvayne and Deftones are the bands I liked from that 'nu metal' lot. But Deftones shifted to a more art rock sound from White Pony and I still like them. Mad at Gravity is another band that I liked though they were much lesser known and not really 'nu metal'.

Cause he just is. and So are you.


Bolt Thrower in all albums has sounded like Bolt Thrower to me... aka GOOOOOOD.

/End

In my defense, I grew up in the middle of nowhere. I didn't really have much exposure to anything -but- NuMetal in those days.
The picture I used for this net release is actually a Google Earth screen shot of the library (AND town hall) where I grew up.

I'm telling you, I relate to movies like Gummo and shows like Squidbillies on a really deep and sincere level because I lived them!

That's my excuse...

One more band for you to listen more of. How is your USPM trip coming along?

With regards to Bolt Thrower, I feel all their records have something good to offer. People have associated the word 'consistent' with this band since the early 2000s for good reason. But I can't really point out which album I prefer over the rest though.

S'ok. I'm just an old bastard happily blasting Bathory and the 'Frost etc... when I am dj-ing though, I am thoroughly confused by assholes asking me to play some Mushroomhead or whatever other nonsense I know nothing about - to the point of violence almost.

Stupid one dimensional cunts who also yell "play some Slayer!!" when I JUST FUCKING DID piss me off too...

That new Pig Destroyer EP is actually rather good. Makes me want to explore their back-catalogue (even though I'm aware of the stylistic differences).

I somehow missed any kind of Nu Metal phase - I guess it was on-the-way-out somewhat by the time I was interested in music, which would have been '07 or so. I went straight from Greenday to thrash, by way of some unconscious musical priming through Vice City's V-Rock, which I didn't realise was metal until some time afterwards.

With regards to Bolt Thrower, they're probably the band, along with more recently Master and Vader, which made me finally look at death-metal and think "yeah, I'm starting to dig this as a genre now". Also I feel like I stand alone in holding Honour Valour Pride as one of my favourite albums by them.